1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to pouches and bags for luggage protection that provide tamper evidence. This invention relates to pouches and bags having intelligent means for labeling and tracking luggage. More specifically, this invention relates to intelligent luggage protection pouches and bags having means for labeling, tracking the luggage enclosed therein.
2. Description of the Prior Art
On average, 10 billion dollars are spent in the United States on travel and travel-related goods and services. Estimated annual passengers during 2005 are 637 million in the U.S. and 1.2 billion in the world. The average passenger checks 1.7 pieces of luggage. Thus, in 2005, there will be over 2 billion pieces of luggage checked throughout the world.
Despite efforts by the airline industry, passengers continue to report incidents of luggage being mishandled by airport and/or airline personnel. For example, the U.S. Department of Transportation reported that American Airlines, the largest air-carrier in the United States, enplaned 6,595,558 passengers during August 2001 and received 30,006 complaints regarding mishandled luggage during that month, which is a rate of about 4.5 complaints per 1000 passengers. In August 2002, American Airlines enplaned 7,579,938 passengers and received 28,744 baggage related complaints, which is a rate of about 3.8 complaints per 1000 passengers.
Passengers place a high value on safeguarding the contents held within their luggage. Passengers are also desirous of protecting the structure and finish of their luggage. Passengers concerns about their luggage and the contents held therein, while present whenever and wherever passengers travel, are particularly common for passengers traveling by air. The bags of airline passengers are transferred and handled by a large number of unseen airport and airline personnel, making it likely that at least some bags will be damaged, stolen, or pilfering during their transit. It is also difficult for the owners of mishandled bags to determine when and where their bag was damaged, stolen, or pilfered.
Prior art locking devices are not effective for safeguarding the contents of a checked bag. While locks on luggage may be provided as a deterrent to theft and pilfering, they can be easily be broken and removed with little or no evidence drawing attention to the compromised condition of the luggage. When the passenger sees the damage, many hours and many hundreds of miles may separate the passenger from the time and location of the damage.
As the number of airline passengers increases both domestically and worldwide, there is an increasing volume of luggage that must be processed by the airports and airlines. However, the infrastructure for processing luggage at airports continues to be a weak point. For example, barcode tags on luggage are used for sorting bags, but there is no system for using the barcode tags to continuously track bags. Moreover, even for the routine task of sorting bags, the barcode tags are capable of a read-through rate of only about 70% to about 80%, meaning that baggage personnel must be heavily relied upon to make sure that the hundreds of bags passing by them every day are properly sorted. Unfortunately, these baggage personnel, who must be relied upon, may roughly handle or ransack the luggage that they are supposed to safeguard, especially since they usually work for low pay without competent supervision.
For security reasons, radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is being introduced to increase the speed and accuracy of matching passengers with their luggage, which is referred to as positive passenger bag matching. However, positive passenger bag matching is concerned with security at the point of departure only. At the point of arrival, positive passenger bag matching cannot ensure that bags are not illicitly opened, or locate lost bags.